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Wednesday, June 29, 2011

So you want to use Backtrack 5? [With Pictures/Windows/Mac/Linux]

I'm seeing a lot of my viewers still use Windows, and since I haven't posted any Windows information yet (don't worry, I will!) I felt like posting a how-to on dual-booting (or single-booting) the penetration testing suite I use called Backtrack 5 would be very helpful to everyone viewing my blog.

Here's a quick list of the things you'll need to install Backtrack 5:

a USB stick with at least 2gigs of free space (mine is 8gigs), I would suggest 4gigs as a minimum.

a computer to install it to (you can dualboot, or fresh install and overwrite a disk)

an Ethernet Internet connection makes this easier in the updating stage.

First we're going to have to format your USB stick-drive (or whatever you want to call it... pendrive or stick) to "FAT 32" (File Allocation Table) which is not the normal format most USB drives use. The default is usually NTFS (New Technology File System) and supports higher file sizes and is in general faster than FAT 32. You can read more on the differences here.

Plug in your USB stick to a computer that can connect to the Internet (I'm assuming, since you're reading this, that you can download and transfer files) and go to "My Computer" on Windows, or your respective file system directory. I'm using Windows XP SP3, so the screenshots and most of my references will be based upon the look and feel of that. If you have a different OS then I'll try to help you troubleshoot it, but I don't have much experience in iOS or Vista at the moment.

The USB pendrive should be visible here.

When you can see the drive, right click it and a "format" option should be available. Click on that option.

Click the "format" option.

Once you've clicked it, a GUI (graphical user interface) panel should pop up much like this:

View on Windows XP SP3

Make sure you don't have any sensitive information or files you want on your drive... this will completely erase it. Before you do this, save all your files on this drive!

My options are already set like I want, but the "File System" should be "FAT32" and not "NTFS," if you format it as NTFS, it will be pointless. Leave the "allocation unit size" default and name your "volume label" whatever you want; I kept mine the same.
Once you click "START" it will remind you all information will be deleted... so again SAVE ANY FILES YOU DON'T WANT TO LOSE FOREVER.

It shouldn't take long to format, and a "format complete" pop up will come up. Good job, step 1 is down!

Now to get Backtrack 5 up on your drive...
Go to the Backtrack download page and just click the "download" button in the middle of the screen; you don't need to enter an email if you don't want to.

You don't have to register, but go ahead if it interests you.

The window will change to a selection area of the different "flavors" of Backtrack 5. Below is a quick explanation of each:

WM Flavor

GNOME --- check out the Gnome site for an in-depth view of what it is, but below is a screenshot of the look. I personally use GNOME over KDE.

GNOME Backtrack 5 GUI

KDE --- check out the KDE site for an in-depth view of what this flavor is like, but again, here's a screenshot of the KDE look on Backtrack 5

KDE Backtrack 5 GUI

The "Architecture" depends on your CPU (32-bit or 64-bit processor) -- a safe bet is 32-bit, but if you know your CPU is 64-bit you can use that.

The "image" is the type of file you want to download. Download the "ISO" for now since we're going to be using that one. VM is for using as a virtual machine (check out my Penetration Testing Lab Setup for more on that)

The "download" is how you'll be downloading it. If you know how to torrent, you can do that, but otherwise just choose "direct" and it will download it off the Backtrack 5 server.

Click the download button, and above the selection screen another interface will appear and tell you it's loading. After a few seconds, it will ask you again if you wish to register. Go ahead or don't, it doesn't matter. After you click through that selection, the download should pop up. Go ahead and save it to your desktop.

Sorry the picture is fuzzy, click on it for an enlarged version.

Now we need to download the program to put this ISO on our formatted pendrive. It's called "UNetbootin" and can be downloaded for Windows here, Mac OS here, and if you're reinstalling from Linux, grab the Linux one here.
Once it's done downloading from Sourceforge, just run the program (it requires no installation) and you will be confronted with an options page.

Go ahead and ignore the top selections and click the hollow circle next to "Diskimage," then click the "..." button to the far right and navigate and select the ISO you just downloaded (it should be on your desktop like I instructed).
Leave the "type" on USB Drive, or select that option if it is not already selected, and have the correct drive selected as well (you can view which drive it is in My Computer).
Next, click "OK" and it should skip downloading files (we're using an ISO, so no downloading necessary), extract and copy, install the bootloader, then complete the installation (this may take some time... just be patient).

After it installs it will give you the option to restart or cancel. If you want to install BT5 on your current computer right now, just click the restart to begin, or click cancel and plug in your USB stick to the computer you want to install it to and restart or turn on that computer.

When your computer is starting up, mash the key to enter boot options (mine is F10, most are F12 as far as I know) and a boot option loadup should appear. Select the top most Backtrack option (should say something like text mode; also available are forensics mode, memtest mode, and others, but don't worry about those).

The Backtrack 5 background should appear with no icons or anything; push the F8 key and it will continue.

Your computer should then load up in a black screen with white text cascading down (this is Backtrack loading off your USB) and you should be confronted with a command prompt line. If it asks for a login, the default is "root" and password "toor" but for now it shouldn't.
Type in "startx" to load the Backtrack GUI (graphical user interface) with one icon in the top left that says "Install Backtrack" with the Backtrack icon. Double click this.

This is the installation of Backtrack 5 onto your computer so you can run it off the HDD (hard disk drive) and not the USB stick. Go through each setup configuration (time zone, language, and keyboard setup) until you reach a prompt like the one below (not my prompt; mine is Windows XP, but I couldn't get a screenshot of mine).

If you want to dual-boot, make sure the top selection "install them side by side" is selected, if you select a different one it will ERASE YOUR HARD DRIVE AND START FROM SCRATCH.

If you want to solo-boot Backtrack, select the second option "erase and use entire disk" and select the correct HDD.

If you're dual-booting it should tell you it's creating a new partition (space for the new operating system) and might take a while to do so, just wait for this to finish.

Once this is done a "ready to install" page will show. Click on the "advanced" tab in the bottom right and make sure "install boot loader" is checked.
Mine is "/dev/sda/" whereas my XP is "/dev/sda1/" so make sure they aren't the same or your computer is going to be quite messed up.

After that is done, click "install" and it will begin. The installation pauses on 99% for quite some time, so don't worry (most of the installation is on 99% which isn't really the point of an updating bar).
After it's installed, click the "restart now" button that pops up, or if you don't want to for some reason click the "continue testing" button.

If you're dual-booting, once you boot up your system it should ask which operating system you want to use, select Backtrack 5 and push F8 again when the background shows up (don't panic because you can't do anything, your computer hasn't frozen, this is how BT loads) and wait for the black loadup screen to come up with cascading text.

The default login is again "root" as the username and "toor" (root backwards) as the password.
Change your password by typing "passwd [new password]" and it will update your password to whatever you want. Do this now for extra security.
Next, on the next screen type "startx" to load up the Backtrack GUI so we can actually use our penetration suites.

Lets do our first terminal usage with Backtrack to upgrade and update the already installed suites (collection of programs).

Open a terminal (the black box with a ">_" in it on the top or bottom bar depending on whether you downloaded Gnome or KDE) and type "apt-get upgrade"

For me everything is upgraded and it should tell you that. Next, type "apt-get update" and it will update all your packages installed. Mine only updated 3,473 kbs, but some others may not be updated for some reason. Run these frequently to get the most updated versions of all your programs! I run it once every few days.

That's it. You should have Backtrack 5 working on your computer or laptop and should be able to dual-boot if you want that. Post below any issues and I'll respond!

The backtrack program will run kinda slow unless you allocate more than 2GB of memory towards the partition. If this is done you might have data swapping between the two partitions. Although it is still better than booting from the CD at start-up. If you are using it for questionable reasons, use a CD so that you can get rid of it.

Like the Anon before me said, it may be slower depending on your computer. The main thing is that you cannot access your Wireless card through VMWARE, so I would suggest dual-booting or using a live-cd/usb key if you wish to do wireless things with BT.

@Paul, as far as I know... nothing really. There might be problems connecting to certain networks and such, but I know that many people run it on VMWare fine.I just prefer running it dual-boot or solo-boot over VMWare.

@Paul, One of the things Backtrack is used for is cracking of WEP en WPA (2?) networks. This dousnt work in a VM as it is not posible to get WIFI functionality inside a VM. (like joining a network) It is posible to join a wifi with the host computer and than become an client on this network.. using some kind of a natted(?) network connection as NIC. (hope this makes sence). For testing exploits or other tools a VM is just fine!

I'm running Backtrack installed on a virtual machine (VirtualPC under linux, of course) and I think that's quite OK to use it in this way. You don't affect to much the guest operating system and It's more flexible to testing different distros or tools.

See I feard this, these USB key don't boot off on a Mac. Macs don't use BIOS they use EFI because you know... they're cool like that... so you cant use bootable usb sticks to boot on a mac. I'm still looking for a trick to make a Mac-bootable USB stick.

I believe you might be able to get a bootable USB stick by formatting the USB with the Mac. I ma not too familar with Mac's but it might work. Also there is a way to make the stick appear as a floppy but be warned, it will make the stick low density so a desktop of some laptops will see the stick as a floppy drive. HP has software to do this but it will render the stick useless for anything else as the software warns you. Not real sure if you can reverse this process either.Good Luck

When I fire up my USB (I used pendrivelinux.com) Everything is fine. I get the option to choose Text, Forensics, etc. but when I hit Enter, my screen goes black and does nothing. It is like the screen turns off but, it runs in the background. Does anyone else have this problem or a fix?

there is a problem with the screen resolution when using Linux esp if you are using hdtv as your monitor hence the "not supported" and blank screen, download vm player and run iso disc from dvd drive and boot up this way and you'll have backtrack 5 on your computer, otherwise get use another monitor

The option "Install them side by side" is not appearing in my Backtrack 5 r1 64 bit installation.I've just formatted my whole hard drive of my Laptop and installed windows 7 Home premium. During the windows installation I was not able to even delete and re-partition my Hard disk. I've made partitions by "Shrink volume" in Windows 7 utilities after installation of Windows 7.The partitions I've made by "Shrink volume" are appearing as "unusable" in Backtrack 5 installation.Please give me the solution..

hello! please help me out on backtrack network connection issues, each time i try to connect to both wired and wireless its say can not obtain ip address. whats next for me to do. i even set up a adhoc network on the backtrack system, and others where connect but still says no network access

i have installed backtrack 5 R1 kde on my external and it sees my wireless card and all the wireless networks around me but when i try to connect to my wpa2 wireless network it keeps saying bad password can anyone help?

Sorry guys for not responding at all... I've been super busy with school and Adsense shut down my advertising and their customer service is awful so I can't get it back up, but I'm transferring my ads so I'm getting more involved again... but anyway here are some answers if I can...

@Taranasus My suggestion would be load a VM and install it through that, or use a Live-CD to try to dualboot.

@Sabtenam Try booting it into a different mode; I also have an ARP poisoning guide already on my blog =]

@AnonymousOct13th It should be the same way, is it not?

@JugzG0nn4G3tY4 What type of computer/USB version do you have? There's problems with USB 3.0 and booting off it (it's why I have to use a VM on my Laptop).

@AnonDec4th Try looking up a more in-depth guide than mine... there are many that tell you how to manually partition for your Dual-boot.

@HackFaces Are you in a VM or Dual-Boot? What type of computer do you have and what's your NIC?

@AnonDec14th What application are you using? Network Manager or the default one on BT? I can't think of the default one right now but I've had so many issues with it, I think it's Wicd... I'd suggest removing it and getting "Network Manager" instead.

You shouldnt let whether or not you have ads on the site decide whether or not you work on your site. It should be about the love/passion/dedication of doing what you do. My sites are adless, because helping others is what drives me. Anyway! I'm only a quarter into the article so far and I LOVE how clear and concise you write (in an area where clarity is a MUST). I would love to read a how-to on AirCrack written by you, since the one I have was written by someone whose goal was to write one in 60 seconds or less. :( Anyway, just started using BT5 and I'm loving it. Was wondering if it would be the same if I just installed Debian and added the extras? It looks like an O/S I could really get use to.. :) -- tim at ytepisodes

@marshall AnonDec14thI am using the Wicd i will try to see if network manager will work but i have another issue maybe you can help with i have BT5 working on my external drive drive got wiped and now every time i put it back on my external drive and boot it up i get grub rescue i have tried NTFS,and Fat32 formats is there a reason it wont read it?

"Once this is done a "ready to install" page will show. Click on the "advanced" tab in the bottom right and make sure "install boot loader" is checked.Mine is "/dev/sda/" whereas my XP is "/dev/sda1/" so make sure they aren't the same or your computer is going to be quite messed up."

What if they have the same name like both /sda then what to do? Didn't understand that part sorry.

I've downloaded backtrack 5 several times but when I get to step 4 there isn't the side by side option it's either a full erase or manual partition. Also I specify backtrack 5 r1 and always end up with backtrack 5. Any ideas and thanks for the brilliant tutorial.

waow.... powerful tutorial worked verywell for me. now i have acktrack 5 runnuing side by side with my windows 7 ultimate. but i cant open documents neider can i play music with the back track also what other things can i do with back track and where can i get the tutorials please. Thanks in advance

wow if you wana play games and be dumb use windows . if you wana listen to music and videos get linux (ubuntu) is my fav. if you wana hack any thing and everything get backtrack and then spend years reading about pen testing it dont come over night.

i think you mean wep and wpa its easy if you know unix/linux bash scripting perl helps dont expect to lern it over night, my advice dich windows use ubuntu and read alot you might get a program that will work 10 percent of the time but that dont make you a hacker read a book , or youl just be a script kitty

hi i need help with bt5r1. i use kubuntu linux . and i download unetbootin bt5r1 and i have a usb 8gb. when im booting to flash drive. after extraction it opens a unetbootin menu and not backtrack. what should i do??? please help!!!

You can also create a live boot usb drive which won't save anything to you computers hdd and you can boot it off any pc as long as you edit the BIOS to boot off of usb first. I just used 2 usbs. (1 8gb sdhc) that was mounted in my android phone connected to usb & mounted as a disk drive I put the ISO file on that with unetbootin & then I booted with that and installed the Bt5r1 to an encrypted 16gb usb thumbdrive. So long story short? If you wanna save your data each time you boot but don't wanna risk screwing up your pc or leaving sensitive files on your home comp and be able to bring your files everywhere you go then do a persistent install using two usb drives min 4gb for boot image and 8gb minimum for OS.

Also you CAN run all the WiFi tools off of a windows VMWare install. You need a seperate usb wireless WiFi connector that can go into monitor mode and inject packets needed to break encrypted networks. They are cheap usually $10-$75 all you have to do is disconnect you connection from the windows pc and enable the usb device in VMWare then depending on which WiFi adapter you have some are plugnplay (realtek8187L) & work outta the box. Others you have to install drivers / edited or compile new kernels & should only be done by an experienced user. Once you disconnect your regular connection to your pc. Plug in the usb WiFi connector when you boot your vm. Just Google. There Is instructions on the net. And there is a list of compatible cards on the back track wikip.

got a problem mate. I installed everything, made sure i checked the loader and when I rebooted the only thing that loaded up was windows, it didnt even give me a choice. backtrack will only load up if i have the usb in. i'm really stuck! any advice? thought I made a mistake so I uninstalled backtrack and did the whole process again but still the same problem occured. I am using windows 7.

Hi, i just installed my BT5 using a live cd and i tried searching for wifi network connections and i cant seem to detect any of it. when you freshly install backtrack do you need to install drivers for the laptop? or it installs the drivers automatically during the installation process? how can you check if i have all my drivers installed? appreciate any help

For some reason, when i tried to install it from a VBox, i couldnt install side by side(im guessing it is because BT was only seeing the new driver that the VBox made, it was only giving me the option to erase the entire disk or to partition it. So if you want to install side by side, then you have to boot off a USB, you cant install side by side if you are running through a VBox

before I decide to start installing this I have a few questions and if anyone could answer them I'd be very thankful.

Firstly, I'm currently on a PC with no wifi capabilities, and am waiting for a new hard drive for my laptop to arrive in a few days. Should I wait or can I use it on this PC (that has no wifi capabilities).

Secondly, I don't have a USB stick, I have a 900 or so GB hard drive, and when I ask it to format, it keeps telling me it couldn't be done. I've even erased everything in the drive in case there was a protected file in there but it's still not formatting. Anyone know what could cause this?

Thirdly, and what also could be important to the second question is that when I get to the window for the formatting, instead of the option FAT32 I get exFAT, is this why it's not working?

I'll follow your blog and check back to see if anyone can answer my questions, but if you can't really be bothered typing it out here feel free to email me at anonym89@tormail.net

i am having a big problem,i have installed xp sp3 on my system and when i try to install backtrack 5 with usb then at step 4,inspite of showing xp installed it says "this machine has no os installed",then it asks to install backtrack on single partition i.e. my harddisk.What should i do??

i'm running into an issue when installing backtrack5, (original distro, the others were too big for my 2gb pendrive) when i let the installer "erase everything" and partition on it's own, it fails, and give me "error: cannot read the Linux header. error: you need to load the kernel first. failed to boot both default and fallback entries."i've been able to install and partition my hard drive manually, but that then gives me a "grub rescue" message, i'm new to linux, and i wanted to learn, i'm alright with computers, but this seems to be making it hard for spite, any suggestions?

i've got a windows 7 home premium and just found out that my pc does not have the bios feature for virtualization. i have been reading quite a bit and been trying to get my head wrapped up with linux and stuff and i don't quite know the right way to go.also i've read u can do adual boot but isn't that a bit dangerous without a place to st0rage ur data...and i'm not very tempted to do that would rather do it in a virtual box once a have downloaded oracle.can u help marshall????

I am trying to install bt5 and it said I didn't have enough free space. I free'd up some space on my computer and now it won't let me select the install them side by side option. Why is it doing this, and how can I fix the issue?

Dude I run a network service and IPC communicator sweet of tools along with my back track and a third one to log into my jobs secure linux distro so that I can also look at pay, email, and access all the cool benefit stuff from home. I literally run them all three at a time all day Having isolated systems are very veru secire ways of keeping a fatal line of code injection from destroying your entire core.

Funny when you wrote this 12 months ago people were so complicated to how they could do linux partions with so many builds out there.. Now I laughed today cuz I lwiterally downloaded the 5r2 build today and the instructions would of been "Download ISO file from website download and crack or downoad cracked VMWware for whatever windows you need. Install it, "add new virtual machine" double click the ISO and since i got the package which was also a VMware template install. At that point its simple as double clicking and youre at room level terminal. You can either waste time mounting and calling coms ou in text you can OR you can type xstart two seconds later and you're completely operational with two opersating systems (or in my ase 4)

Im new to bt and I have the flavor backtrack5 r2.then iwent to gnome and ISO but I got the torrent because it was faster. But now idk what ISO I use. I extracted it and it has a folder that say isolinux. But when I open it. I has 6 files name: boot,isolinux,isolinux.cfg,memtest,splash,vesamenu.32. Or do I go to the folder that says "[BOOT]",but when I go to the file: bootable_noemulation. It says to burn the disc image but when I click burn. It says selected.m disc image file isn't valid help if you could?

Reading through these comments from top to bottom turned out to be quite a comical timeline. It's easy to separate who are thought they have some magic hacking OS from those who actually know what they are talking about, because later on a majority of them couldn't even get past a clean install. This isn't some weak Windows magic autopwn tool that is going to let you point and click your way to being an elite hacker. The BT distro is made for people who are experienced linux users who are serious about netsec in one way or another. "I can't listen to music what other cool stuff can I do" you really shouldn't be behind a rootshell.

hello all. i have a ? i used a live cd to run backtrack 5 on my hd hdx laptop. my second niko pnp monitor worked great too, but when i installed it on my hardrive it quit working . what should i do ..? my email is kruell.ryan@yahoo.com. thanks all ..

windows is for newbies, if you want to hack use linux any version ubuntu backtrack fadora knopix its what the internet is built on, way more secure, and you can actualy say you know something. if a windows user told me they were a hacker i would laugh out loud and feel sorry for them.

ok so i tried booting from usb stick and i get the error can not mount /dev/loop0 (/cdrom/casper/filesystem.squashfs) on //filesystem.squashfs i have tried everthing under the sun to fix it. ive tried a different iso ive tried a different compiler like universal usb loader ive tried creating partitions in windows before booting. ive tried live cds ive tried loading it strait to my hdd. if i disable my hdd in bios it lets me boot from the usb but i cant format it to my hdd because it is disabled. This is extremely frustrating can anyone help please?

I wish I could find a solution, the bug has been out for years now and still no known fix, I as well have read all sorts of things working for people, the only thing I havn't tried is using an older usb2.0 as usb 3.0 seem to be causing it? Just something I read in the last 10 minutes, I'll give it a shot.

Hi,I followed the instructions. Running ver 5 R3. When installing I get to root and type startx and the screen goes black and just hangs there. Reinstalled it again on thumb and the same. Tried both default and text modes and it does the same. Anyone having this issue?

hay great post .. I was studying backtrack for about 2 weeks in my usb live in order to further install it with some knowledge ,,,but my main fear is what I heard that it is so hard to uninstall backtrack without damaging the original operating system.is that true.and if i wanted to uninstall it for some reason ,,can u teel me how when I choose ( side by side ) option ....

This was a great tutorial all I can day is the directions on here are as simple as they get if you can't figure it out from these posts maybe you shouldn't be playing with big kids software until you learn a bit more about your system and computers in general. Not trying to be mean just trying to be honest thanks for the great post I would love an email where I could contact you to learn more this is kind of my passion and you seem to be an extremely good teacher!!

dont download this backtrack iso its full off malware and bugs so this scammer can hijack u or do u think hes doing this to be kind grow up this backtrak ppl are just dirty scum i know since 40 years ago.

dont download this backtrack iso its full off malware and bugs so this scammer can hijack u or do u think hes doing this to be kind grow up this backtrak ppl are just dirty scum i know since 40 years ago.

I am really new for backtrack, I downloaded the latest backtrack on it's own site. Before installing it I have a doubt that I have heard , when we boot the backtrack it always needs the live CD or USB with backtrack on it, is it true? Can't we use backtrack like we use windows or ubuntu?

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